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Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Israel chides club for racism in bid to fend off FIFA suspension

Israel’s Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC)
has demanded that notoriously racist club Beitar Jerusalem, the bad boy of
Israeli soccer, retract recent statements that it would maintain its policy of
not hiring Palestinian players because of opposition by the team’s militant, racist
fan base.

The demand comes as Israel is fighting an attempt by the
Palestine Football Association (PFA) to get the Jewish state suspended from
FIFA at next month’s congress of the world soccer body. The PFA charges that
Israel hinders the development of Palestinian soccer by obstructing travel of
Palestinian players between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well as abroad.

Senior Israeli soccer officials are in Europe this week for
talks with FIFA president Sepp Blatter, and Michel Platini, the head of the
European soccer body UEFA, in a bid to block the PFA effort. They counter the
Palestinian assertion by insisting that the Israel Football Association (IFA)
has no say in Israeli security policy.

The PFA effort is part of a broader campaign by President
Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine Authority to pressure and isolate Israel following the
failure of peace talks and last year’s Gaza war by joining multiple UN
organizations, particularly the International Criminal Court (ICC). FIFA was
the first international group to recognize Palestine as far back as 1998.

An Israeli law firm joined the Israeli-Palestinian battle in
international organizations with a petition to the ICC to investigate PFA
president General Jibril Rajoub on suspicion of war crimes during last year’s
Gaza war.

It is hard to assume that the demand by the EEOC is at least
not in part related to the battle over Israel’s status in FIFA given that the
commission has not acted in the past against Beitar Jerusalem, the only top flight
Israeli club to have not hired Palestinian players even though Palestinians
rank among the country’s top performers. Beitar’s nationalist ideology is
embedded in its name, a reference to the Jews’ last standing fortress in the
second century Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans.

Similarly, the Israel Football Association, even though it
is the only Middle Eastern soccer body to have an anti-racism program, has repeatedly
slapped Beitar Jerusalem on the knuckles but has always stopped short of
significantly raising the cost of the club’s persistent racism. Beitar, which has
long enjoyed the support of Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benyamin
Netanyahu and other prominent right-wing personalities, has the worst
disciplinary record in Israel’s Premier League.

Beitar’s rabidly anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim La Familia support
group sparked rare national outrage in 2013 when it unfurled a banner asserting
that “Beitar will always remain pure” in protest against the club’s brief hiring
of two Muslim players from Chechnya. It was the group’s use of language
associated with German National Socialism that sparked the outrage against its
consistent racism.

Nonetheless, La Familia operates in an environment in which
racism, racial superiority, bigotry, double standards and little sincere effort
to address a key issue that undermines Israel’ s projection of itself as a
democratic state founded on the ashes of discrimination , prejudice and
genocide is one predominant story that emerges from the country’s soccer
pitches.

Writing in Soccer & Society, Israeli football scholar
Amir Ben-Porat warned that “the football stadium has become an arena for
protest: political, ethnic, nationalism, etc… ‘Death to the Arabs’ has thus
become common chant in football stadiums… Many Israelis consider the Israeli
Arabs (Palestinians) to be ‘Conditional Strangers,’ that is temporary citizens…
Contrary to conventional expectations, these fans are not unsophisticated
rowdies, but middle-class political-ideological right-wingers, whose rejection
of Arab football players on their team is based on a definite conception of
Israel as a Jewish (Zionist) state,” Mr. Ben-Porat wrote.

Responding to Mr. Levi, IFA president Ofer Eini said "Levy's
words are not appropriate and their racist scent certainly doesn't contribute
to Israeli soccer and Israeli society. As a coach and an educator it would have
been better had he avoided comments which can serve those who want to divide
Israeli society." Mr. Eini did not include any potential punitive action
against Beitar in his statement.

The EEOC and the IFA took issue with a statement in a radio
interview by Beitar coach Guy Levi that “it doesn’t matter that this is the
right time; it would create tension and cause much greater damage. I won’t find
any player from the Arab sector who would want to. Even if there was a player
who suited me professionally, I wouldn’t bring him, because it would create
unnecessary tension.”

Mr. Levi said that opposition by La Familia, whom he praised,
meant that he would not sign Israel international Bibras Natcho, a Circassian
Muslim, as it would stir unrest among the club’s supporters.

"My job is to
coach the team, not to educate anyone," Mr. Levy said. Mr. Natcho, a CSKA
Moscow midfielder asked Mr. Levy on Twitter: "What would happen if a
European coach would have announced that he doesn't want a Jewish player on his
team?"

EEOC commissioner Tziona Koenig-Yair asserted that Mr. Levi’s
comments constituted “suspicion of racism in contravention of the law
prohibiting discrimination based on nationality, among other things in
acceptance to employment.”

Mr. Levi’s assertion that Palestinian players would not want
to play for Beitar, presumably because the explicit racist provocation of,
chants against, and attacks on Palestinians and Muslims by La Familia, was
belied by Mohammed Ghadir, a Palestinian striker, who in 2011 said he wanted to
play for Beitar but was rejected. "I am well suited to Beitar, and that
team would fit me like a glove. I have no qualms about moving to play for them,”
Mr. Ghadir said at the time. The EEOC and the IFA failed to step in.

In a commentary on Mr. Ghadir’s case, Ha’aretz columnist
Yoav Borowitz noted that “an extraordinarily courageous Arab player has stood
up, and fearlessly indicated that he is not afraid to play for Beitar. The
Jerusalem squad did not assent to his request - not because he lacks sufficient
talent, but because he is an Arab. This is a mark of Cain for Beitar Jerusalem
and its fans, and also for the city of Jerusalem, the state of Israel and its
legal system, the IFA and also for the media, which continues to cover this
soccer team. Day by day, we reinforce and popularize this loathsome form of
racism.”

Beitar was founded in 1936 by members of the Beitar movement
established in 1923 in Latvia as part of the revanchist Zionist trend. Beitar’s
founder, former Ukrainian war reporter Ze'ev Jabotinsky, hoped to imbue its
members with a military spirit.

The club initially drew many of its players and fans from
Irgun, an extreme nationalist, para-military Jewish underground that waged a
violent campaign against the pre-state British mandate authorities. As a
result, many of them were exiled to Eritrea in the 1940s. Many of La Familia’s
members are supporters of Kach, the outlawed violent and racist party that was
headed by assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane. La Familia frequently displays Kach’s
symbols.

Beitar’s initial anthem reflected the club’s politics,
glorifying a “guerrilla army racist and tough, an army that calls itself the
supporters of Beitar.” That spirit still comes to life when fans of Beitar
meets their team’s Palestinian rivals. Their support reaches a feverish pitch
as they chant racist, anti-Arab songs and denounce the Prophet Mohammed.

males of Middle Eastern and North African
origin who defined their support as subversive and against the country’s
Ashkenazi establishment -- revel in their status as bad boys. Their dislike of
Ashkenazi Jews of East European extraction, rooted in resentment against social
and economic discrimination, rivals their disdain for Palestinians.

The failure to seriously confront La Familia has entrenched
Palestinian perceptions of an Israeli society that is inherently racist.
Israeli Palestinian Member of Parliament Ahmed Tibi has laid the blame for La
Familia’s excess at the doorstep of Israeli political and sports leaders. “For
years, no one really tried to stop them, not the police, not the club, not the
attorney-general and not the Israeli Football Association," he said.

James M.
Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
(RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-­‐director of the
University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a syndicated columnist, and
the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccerblog

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile